LifeLock Blog

A new policy in Maine schools has been designed to use a students social security number to track students K-12 progress through college and into the workforce. The program’s goal is to learn more about what the schools can do to help their students be successful. The information gathered could be used to develop programs and policies that could help accomplish their goal.

The Maine Civil Liberties Union wants to let parents know that the program is optional and could increase the risk of identity theft. The MCLU thought the department of education didn’t do a very good job of informing people of this.  So this week the department of education sent out letters to school districts throughout the state informing school officials they must inform parents that they are not required to submit their children’s social security numbers. Many schools from around the US have stopped using SSN as a student’s identification number. Many of these schools are colleges especially after a student successfully sued an university for violation of privacy and illegal use of social security numbers.

I am not sure what exactly this new policy is going to accomplish but it seems it could do a lot more damage than good. I assume they need the Students SSN so they can track the jobs you obtain and the SSN is the only way to do that without implementing a whole new system. I know if I was a parent in Maine I wouldn’t give my child’s SSN to this program. It seems unnecessary and could lead to an identity theft if the system storing all the information was ever breached. A database with thousands of children’s SSN would be a identity theft gold mine.